


And I am insect small

by threeguesses



Category: Good Wife (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Time, Non-Graphic Violence, POV Alternating, Triggers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:12:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threeguesses/pseuds/threeguesses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalinda recovers. (Written for sweetjamielee's <i>It's A Lockhart/Gardner Tradition</i> 2012 Summer Ficathon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. My hollow flesh stands up in the night

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Alicia/Kalinda, _things we're not good at_. Which I somehow twisted into "The One Where Alicia Takes Kalinda To Her Mother's Summer Home In North Carolina."
> 
> Technically a follow-up to [And you have bent your pride](http://archiveofourown.org/works/460684), but can very well stand on its own.

_The night is immense and awful, Helen, and I am insect_  
 __ _small_  
  
                D. H. Lawrence, _Repulsed_

 

Kalinda’s jaw aches.

It’s been aching for weeks, all through her hospital stay. The morphine and the codeine and whatever else they’ve had her on hasn’t helped, and for the life of her Kalinda couldn’t figure out the trick. It was only today that she remembered—Leela. Leela used to grind her teeth in her sleep. Kalinda woke up this morning and nearly choked on the remembering, her jaw still fixed and tight.

There have been other slip-ups too. Nail-biting, which Kalinda’s always made a point of avoiding in the past. Fidgeting with her hair. Tapping on the hospital bed’s rolling table. Bad habits, and all of them Leela’s. Leela, who drank milky tea and smoked, one cheap pack after another until her fingertips were yellow. Leela, who allowed herself to become dependent on things. The nurses won’t let Kalinda have coffee and every cup of Earl Grey they’ve brought her has tasted like ashes.

(“Leela,” Nick had said. “Leela Leela Leela.” Like a baptismal chant.)

The teeth grinding—Leela’s oldest, longest-buried habit—is the final straw. Ever since leaving the hospital Kalinda’s skin has felt tight and raw everywhere, her whole body like an open wound. It feels as if Leela is slowly clawing her way back inside, unfurling herself from the bullet hole and stretching out her fingers to clutch at gristle and bone. Soon she’ll pull herself up to look out Kalinda’s eyes, speak with Kalinda’s mouth, and then there will be nothing left.

Kalinda shifts painfully, staring out the car window. She could take another Tylenol 3—the nurses gave her two specifically for the journey, a whole bottleful more stashed away in her suitcase—but then Alicia would look over from driving and _worry_. Alicia’s worry is like a physical thing. It presses and itches and grabs, a wet wool coat that is three sizes too big, and Kalinda doesn’t want to provoke it any more than necessary. She knows by now she doesn’t like the results:

“So he just—walked in and shot you?” Alicia asked halfway through the second week. The nurses were doing physio on Kalinda by then, helping increase her range of motion. Alicia was always polite enough to wait outside until afterwards.

Kalinda put down the cup of metallic-tasting water that was her reward for bending her knees. “Alicia, I—” She stopped. Alicia’s stare was unblinking, almost aggressive. They still didn’t know how to talk to one another, could barely be considered friends, but for some reason Alicia kept trying doggedly. Kept dropping by, sometimes after work, sometimes on her lunch break, and Kalinda had more or less gotten used to the intrusion. She understood that she’d scared Alicia. It turned out to be almost as big of a betrayal as lying to her.

(And every time Kalinda got impatient, Leela crept up from between her ribs to remind her that fear was a physical thing too. It sat on you, dug its fingers in. "You gave me such a fright," Alicia had sobbed on that first morphine-soaked day; Leela peered out through Kalinda’s eyes at the terror perched on Alicia’s shoulder like a golem and thought, _Yes, exactly._ )

“Alicia.” Kalinda tried again, breathing deep. She hurt everywhere. “Yeah. Okay. He just walked in and shot me.” He hadn’t, of course, but Alicia didn’t need to know that.

No one needed to know that.

Alicia narrowed her eyes like she was weighing Kalinda’s answer on some golden scale of truthfulness only she could see. Kalinda had seen that look before; _I can’t be the only one being forthcoming_. In the end, though, she hadn’t said anything.

She’d _done_ something, and that was worse.

She’d done it quietly, so quietly that Kalinda hadn’t seen it coming. The drugs were distracting, and the pain, and she hadn’t read the signs properly. When Alicia swept into the hospital room four days later and presented her Plan, Kalinda had been caught completely off guard.

Alicia had obviously intended it that way. She outlined her idea in front of the nurses with a fixed political smile and a wax-paper face. It was cleared with the supervising physician, she said. She’d already informed Will and Diane, she said. The vacation time was booked. There would be no arguments.

The nurses were delighted, cooing about how it was the best solution, the most sensible idea. Alicia nodded imperiously, smiling, and oh, Kalinda had _hated_ her then. Saint Alicia—yes, now she could see it. But the codeine made her mind slow. Leela pushed inside her mouth and held her tongue. There was no winning.

So now—wedged uncomfortably in the passenger seat of Alicia’s car, the I-65 rolling by outside her window—Kalinda has no one to blame but herself. The seatbelt cuts painfully across her abdomen. Behind her, two weeks’ worth of clothing rattles around in the trunk. It’s almost embarrassing, how easily she’s let herself be played.  
  
The pills are in her pocket. Kalinda clutches them, traces their outline through the little plastic bag.  
  
Her jaw throbs, dully and just once.  
  


 

Alicia roots around in her purse for toll money. She can feel Kalinda watching her, has the overwhelming urge to turn around and scream _WHAT?_ at the top of her lungs. They’ve barely said two words to each other the whole drive and the silence is starting to wear on her. She even left the radio off, expecting Kalinda to sleep, but it’s been over an hour and Kalinda’s eyes haven’t drooped once. It’s eerie, and not a little bit annoying.  
  
We are doing this, Alicia tells her silently. I got you shot. You are _letting me do this_ , dammit.  
  
The problem with the silence is it extends past the car ride. The last few weeks Kalinda has been in the hospital, the last few months when they weren’t talking—all of it has been swallowed up by a giant hush Alicia can’t seem to fight her way free of. She doesn’t even really know what it is she wants Kalinda to let her _do_ , since so far all she’s managed are clumsy, empty gestures. Every new magazine and book and plant she’d brought to the hospital had done nothing but leave Kalinda looking increasingly nonplussed.  
  
“You know I can’t walk over and water that, right?” she’d asked when Alicia set the little basket of pansies by the window.  
  
Alicia fluffed the arrangement, caught between embarrassment and wild, irrational anger. She’d always liked pansies; their sweet little faces reminded her of spring. “The nurses will do it,” she said shortly.  
  
Kalinda licked her lips. They had her on a liquid diet but she always looked parched, bare mouth cracked like she’d been months in the desert. The one time Alicia had dared to touch her—to clutch her hand in those first few minutes of bone-deep relief—her skin had been animal-hot. “I’m sure they’ll love that chore,” she said evenly, rolling her eyes. All of a sudden Alicia wanted to slap her, make those pale lips bloom with blood.  
  
She hadn’t brought flowers again.  
  
What she really wants to do: demand explanations. The questions stack up inside each other like Matryoshka dolls, each one opening onto the next— _who is your husband what did he do to you why did you let him do it why did you marry him did you love him was it my fault was it my fault that he found you are you angry are you afraid can you forgive me please forgive me_ —but Alicia’s too scared to ask them. In these past few months Kalinda has become unfamiliar, and Alicia doesn’t know how to read her expressions anymore.  
  
(The smallest Matryoshka question, the one inside all the others: _why didn’t you run?_  
  
Alicia doesn’t know what’s inside that.)  
  
Still, disagreements over flowers aside, Alicia can admit Kalinda’s been much more aquiescent than she anticipated—her presence in the car is evidence enough. And only this morning she'd let Alicia follow her into her apartment without comment, both of them stepping gingerly over the police tape. Alicia noticed the emptiness first, the bloodstain on the floor second. She hadn’t mentioned either. Kalinda took her into the bedroom where there was a hole in the drywall and a half-packed bag.  
  
 _I think she’s planning on leaving,_  Will had said, the third day Kalinda hadn’t shown up to work. Yes. Alicia could see that.  
  
“There was more,” Kalinda said quietly as she started to sort through the bag. “The police must’ve taken it.” Alicia swallowed her tongue.  
  
More or not, it probably wouldn’t have helped—most of Kalinda’s clothing turned out to be too tight across the waist, skirts or cinched dresses, and nearly all of it office attire. _What do you wear around the house?_ Alicia had thought as Kalinda rifled through the fabric. But she only sat in a white armchair beside the bed and watched, silent.  
  
In the end they’d mostly packed the things Alicia had purchased during Kalinda’s hospital stay, a collection of loose cotton sleep shirts and bathrobes Kalinda had practically lived in. It hadn’t been Alicia’s idea—a nurse had taken her aside the second day she’d visited and mentioned that she might go by Kalinda’s home and pick up some essentials. Toothpaste, underwear, that kind of thing.  
  
Alicia had felt the full weight of responsibility then. Kalinda was still bleary with the morphine, asleep as often as she was awake. And alone. Very, very alone.  
  
Alicia had known better than to ask for a key.  
  
Instead she’d gone to a Sears and bought everything she could possibly think of, from deodorant to t-shirts. The only hiccup had been the intimate apparel section, where she’d paused for a truly ridiculous amount of time before picking up three packs of underwear (plain black, size small) and a couple of soft pull-on bras with no underwire (size: everything she thought might fit). She’d practically thrown them at the cashier, blushing for no reason at all.  
  
Once they started packing, though, it became clear that ‘everything Alicia could think of’ was still not very much: “We’ll just buy more when we get there,” she told Kalinda as they closed up the mostly-empty suitcase. Kalinda didn’t say anything.  
  
 __

_There_ is Alicia’s mother’s summer house off of Lake James; Alicia pays the toll and tries to remember which exit to take. It's been years since she's visited, not since Grace was in diapers—Peter had started being able to afford more exotic vacations and they simply hadn't looked back (although years later Alicia had wondered; _was that when it started? Was that when we stopped being a family?_ ). The house is empty now, what with her mother back in New York for the winter, and probably cold, but it was the best place Alicia could think of. She hadn't wanted to stay in the city. Kalinda insisted her husband wouldn’t be coming back, but when Alicia had asked her why she’d hedged.  
  
“He shot me, Alicia,” she said, picking at the stiff hospital sheets. “He’s smart. He isn’t going to stick around for the conviction.”  
  
“He came to your apartment to shoot you,” Alicia pointed out. “Obviously he had a plan.” Kalinda said nothing. The bruise on her temple was fading, purple-yellow against her skin.  
  
So, two weeks. Two weeks and Kalinda will be able to drive again, and eat solids, and live alone. Alicia pulls off the I-65 towards Indianapolis and takes a deep breath.  
  



	2. Warm with a bloody glow

The first thing that Kalinda registers about the house is ‘big’. The second is ‘drafty’. Whoever Alicia’s mother is, she’ll be paying their electric bill as they try to heat a building with insulation meant for 80 degree highs.

“Come in, come in,” Alicia calls, clenching the car keys between her teeth. Her breath fogs out in front of her, spectral.

Kalinda comes.

The hallway that unfolds in front of them is wood on wood on wood, bare beams lining the ceiling. There are huge pane-glass windows, and the living room is squashed full of the kind of deliberately eclectic furniture old money likes to stuff its vacation homes with. Kalinda sits on a musty couch while Alicia fusses with the thermostat, looking her fill.

“Here,” Alicia mutters, dropping a quilt with horses running around its edge onto Kalinda’s lap. Kalinda bristles. “I should have known it would be freezing,” Alicia continues, oblivious. She isn’t really talking to Kalinda, just at her, already moving off to poke at the giant earthen fireplace. She’s being solicitous, Kalinda realizes, falling back into the old role of host.

Kalinda tucks the quilt around her hips gingerly. Solicitous is fine. Solicitous is impersonal.

“It’s going to take forever to warm up,” Alicia sighs, glancing at the vaulted ceiling. There’s a staircase curling around its edges, leading up to what Kalinda can only assume is the loft. The fireplace climbs the length of an entire wall, two stories worth of stone. Kalinda settles a private bet with herself about Alicia growing up around money.

(It was something about her speech patterns, her work outfits once she’d figured out how to wear them. Kalinda hadn’t been sure, though. It could always have been bias, Alicia’s fine china face stacking the deck.)

At least the showy chimney seems functional; Alicia’s set up a complex little pyramid of kindling inside with a practiced hand. “I hate fire,” she sighs to Kalinda now, indicating the pile. “Owen set a breadbasket up in flames once and chased me around the house with it. Took our parents forever to notice. But since we’re definitely going to freeze otherwise—”

They stopped to buy groceries in a little town called Marion just before they arrived. Kalinda watches now as Alicia fishes matches out of one of the bags and lights the wood with a flourish.

“There,” Alicia announces, triumphant. “And the flue’s even open, so we probably won’t burn the place to the ground.”

Kalinda holds out one stiff arm towards the warmth. She wants those pills now, and badly, but watching Alicia is just distracting enough to take the edge off. Kalinda has never lived anywhere that is not a city. She’s never seen a fire that wasn’t electric, and certainly never a summer home. Outside the forest presses in around them, immediate. The quiet is almost oppressive.

“Okay,” Alicia says, rubbing her palms together. When she takes off her coat she’s wearing a sweater and jeans, more casual than Kalinda’s ever seen her. Neither of them thought to bring gloves. “Do you want to sleep? Or eat? Or eat and then sleep?”

(Solicitous. Oh yes.)

It’s hard not to smile at her. Kalinda does, albeit tiredly. “No preference.”

Alicia frowns back like she’s being difficult. “Right.” Kalinda wonders if this was what she was like before—before the scandal, before Lockhart/Gardner, a giant North Shore house with manicured lawns. _We would have hated each other_ ; maybe not. “Well,” Alicia continues, “it’s going to take me time to make dinner anyway. You might as well see where you’re staying.”

She leads Kalinda down a different hallway to a room with several bookshelves and a cloudy vanity, all done up in a heavy wood. There are two mismatched beds and an incongruous linoleum floor, coloured carpet runners every which way.

“This used to be the sun porch,” Alicia explains, setting down Kalinda’s suitcase. “So it might be colder. But I thought, because of the stairs…”

Kalinda nods, grateful. “Yeah.”

Alicia hovers in the doorway for a moment, looking lost. Kalinda’s half-afraid she’s going to offer to turn down the beds, but when she finally moves it’s only to reach in and pull the door shut gently. Her parting smile at Kalinda is newscaster-tight.

Kalinda breathes. It’s the first time she’s been alone in a long time, nurses bustling in and out of the hospital room to fix her dressing or check her vitals or bring her jello. She pulls on pyjamas and crawls into the smaller bed without bothering to change the sheets. The pillow smells like sour sleep.

Kalinda dry-swallows the pills she’s been keeping in her pocket and closes her eyes.

 

 

She wakes up to find Leela’s been grinding her teeth again.

She’s also been using Kalinda’s mind to dream about blood; “The body remembers, Leela,” Nick said, and kissed her wet-metallic mouth. Then he reached inside her stomach and twisted.

It takes a long while for Kalinda to shake the image.

The wall at the end of her bed is made entirely of exposed timber; Kalinda counts the logs until her heartbeat slows back down. By the time she’s done she’s noticed the room is several degrees warmer, air whooshing down through the overhead vent like a great breathing animal. Kalinda lies in the dark and breathes with it.

(“You could shoot me,” Nick said. He pulled the gun against his heart and held it there, covering her hand. “Come on, Leela. Shoot me.”)

Somewhere far away a grandfather clock chimes, startling her. Kalinda counts; eight bongs. She initiates an awkward half-roll and slides her body out of bed.

Next door is a tiny bathroom with framed seashells on the walls and a thick, plush bathmat. Kalinda curls her feet into its luxurious pile and drags the sleep shirt high enough to see her stomach. The dressing isn’t bloody, no matter what Leela’s been dreaming. Satisfied, Kalinda splashes water on her face and considers herself in the mirror.

Someone who is not-quite-Kalinda looks back.

Kalinda sighs. It would take a lot of makeup to trick her face into recognizability. She could do it—even out the ashy tone the hospital’s dry air has left her with, brighten her eyes until they stopped looking so sunken—but it hurts to lift her arms for any significant period of time. Even now, standing with the support of the counter, her entire body curls forward like a comma, bowing protectively over her abdomen.

Outside, the hallway is empty and quiet. Kalinda heads back to the bedroom and creakily pulls on the sweater dress she wore for the car ride up. Alicia has seen her in everything from pyjamas to hospital gowns by now, of course, but Kalinda feels better for standing on ceremony. She smoothes the dress over her hips, wishing for a belt, wishing for lipstick.

Not for the first time she wonders what the hell she was thinking, coming here.

She finds Alicia in the kitchen, covering a casserole dish with aluminum foil. “Hi!” Alicia calls when she realizes she’s being watched. “Are you hungry?” She’s got her hair tied back and giant wool socks pulled up over her jeans. “I already ate, but it’s still warm.” Her tentative smile is the brightest thing in the room.

(And oh, Kalinda knows. Kalinda knows exactly what she was thinking.)

“Sure,” she tells Alicia easily, after just one beat too long. She’s more along the lines of nauseous, actually, but breakfast had been strange chemical applesauce at a hotel in Kentucky, hours and hours ago now. It’s probably better that she eats.

She’s expecting soup, or possibly porridge—she’s technically on a liquid diet for two more days—but the plate Alicia sets in front of her is chicken. _Marinated_ chicken, something that smells like brown sugar and garlic and soy sauce and—

Alicia must catch the flicker of her eyebrows. “I figured you must be bored. Just… chew really, really thoroughly, I guess.”

Kalinda doesn’t actually kiss her full on the mouth, but it’s a near thing.

In addition to the chicken there’s a salad, and a side of store-bought naan bread Kalinda isn’t sure was purchased with her specifically in mind or not. All of it tastes obscenely good after an eternity of jello and applesauce. Halfway through Alicia produces a cup of gritty decaf coffee from nowhere, warning Kalinda about the flavour as she pours. It’s disgusting but Kalinda burns her tongue anyway, washing away weeks of Leela’s milky teas.

There’s a Hindu ceremony called Annaprasana, baby’s first solid food. Kalinda cuts her meat into tiny pieces and wonders if this is enough to undo Nick’s baptism.


	3. Breath which rushes upwards

Alicia had forgotten how eerie nighttime could be away from the city lights. The darkness is a like thick solid _thing_ , rubbing up against the windows like a giant cat. There are no blinds in the kitchen, just cheery ruffled curtains, and Alicia keeps catching sight of her reflection in the glass and starting. Her own face stares back at her from the window above the sink as she washes the dishes, shadowed and ghoulish.

Her nail runs up against another piece of baked-on grit. Alicia scowls, peering down at her manicure. There’s a dishwasher, of course, because god knows Margaret Cavanaugh would never let herself be separated from modern convenience, but Alicia is loath to actually use it. She doesn't need modern convenience; she needs to stall. Kalinda’s still eating, and sitting across from her in silence is not exactly Alicia’s idea of a good time.

So far, their attempts to talk have included:

“What’s in this marinade?”

“Oh, just some cider vinegar, plus garlic and brown sugar.”

And:

“It gets so _dark_ out here.”

“Mmm.”

So.

Alicia casts around for another conversation topic—she’s a lawyer, for god’s sake, half of her job is chatting inanely with clients—but the weight of everything they aren’t saying pushes the words back down to die in her throat. Her mind spins over a collection of images, restless; a bloodstained floor, purple-blue IV bruises, Kalinda’s chapped lips in the hospital bed.

(It could have been the abdominal aorta, the doctors said. It almost was.)

Alicia clears her tight throat. It’s psychosomatic, she knows, the pressing feeling, but still. Much easier to wash dishes. Outside the window, the hazy moon looks like it’s been smoking too many cigarettes.

Unfortunately, cooking chicken for two only leaves so much mess. Alicia scrubs the familiar flowered casserole pan three times and still ends up spinning her wheels with nothing to do before Kalinda’s even started on her flatbread.

 _Fine_ , Alicia thinks, sitting down in a huff. _Have it your way_. She has no idea if her ire is directed at Kalinda, the pots, or herself.

Kalinda flicks her eyes over at the sudden company, curious. But when she opens her mouth, all that comes out is, “How long has your mum had this place?”

Evidently she’s having no problems whatsoever swallowing the hypocrisy of pretending. Alicia takes a sip of bitter coffee, but the words stick in her throat anyway. “She got it in the divorce, so— god. Decades.” She runs her hands over the lacy table-mat, fingers the stained corner where Grace once spilled blueberry pie. “It’s been in the family since I was little.”

Kalinda nods. She looks a little better. Less pinched, maybe, although that could just be a side effect of the kitchen’s warm light and lack of hospital equipment. When Alicia closes her eyes everything still glows fluorescent.

There is a long silence.

Alicia watches holes in Kalinda for its duration, feeling bold and bored. She’s tired of pretence, of trying to make people comfortable. Kalinda’s clever-closed face is the most animated thing in the room, save maybe the moon, and Alicia wants to see her squirm.

(Besides, she’s curious—the lack of makeup is still unsettling, even after all these weeks. There’s something profoundly unfamiliar about Kalinda’s bare eyes and mouth that Alicia can’t quite put her finger on. The normally razor-sharp brows are softer, like smudged charcoal.)

Kalinda finally looks up under the scrutiny. “It’s good,” she says, indicating the food.

Alicia had figured that out already; Kalinda eats neatly, but she’s licked the tines of her fork twice now. Her tongue is surprisingly pink.

All of a sudden Alicia finds herself standing. “I’m glad,” she tells a blinking Kalinda. “That it’s good, I mean.” She pivots towards the cupboards, intent on finding wine glasses. She makes a show of it, opening and closing doors she doesn’t need to, looking where she knows they aren’t. Watching Kalinda suddenly feels invasive.

“Do you want some?” she asks once she’s uncorked the bottle. It’s a cheap red, picked up at the local grocery store, but Alicia is pretty sure these next few weeks will require alcohol. Any alcohol. “We’ve already broken half the dietary rules.”

Kalinda pops the last of the flatbread into her mouth, licking her fingers so quickly Alicia almost doesn’t notice. “Sure,” she shrugs. “Why not?” Alicia gets the distinctive feeling she could care less about dietary rules.

And really, why should she? She’s Kalinda.

Just like that Alicia’s angry again, sick with it. It creeps up from her stomach to bloom outward, acrid and choking. She wants to shake Kalinda until something resembling human emotion rattles out ( _You were_ shot,  _for god’s sake, don’t you care?_ ) but she’s half-afraid it would be no more effective than shaking a doll. That same unchanging expression.

The wine smells sour. Alicia pours Kalinda the smallest glass possible, feeling spiteful and shrewish.

“Thanks,” Kalinda says. Alicia searches her face for sarcasm and can’t find a reference point, like reading a map with no legend. She gives up.

Without the excuse of the food, their stunning inability to carry on a conversation somehow becomes worse, swallowing up all the other noises in the house. Alicia swears even the ancient refridgerator stops humming.

“Want to drink these in the living room?” she asks finally. It’s an absurd question; she’s already gulped down two-thirds of her wine. What she should do is finish the rest and go to bed. But Kalinda is sitting too stiffly on her hard-backed chair, an expression that could be pain crawling across her face periodically. The sight makes Alicia’s stomach churn with a strange mixture of compassion and annoyance.

(“Her back should be supported at all times,” the doctor had explained, handing Alicia the physio referral. The clinic was in Marion, a thirty minute drive away from the lake. Kalinda already had a copy; Alicia made her write down every single one of the appointment times.)

Alicia makes a mental note to review that list tomorrow.

The living room is better. Kalinda picks the armchair that has Margaret Cavanaugh’s support cushion velcroed to its back and sits, face smoothing out again immediately.

Idiot, Alicia thinks, though not unkindly.

“So.” Once again she finds herself searching for a topic that has nothing to do with pain meds or gaping holes in people’s abdomens. Only then when she opens her mouth— “Do you know how the investigation’s coming?”

Well. Not _directly_ about gaping holes in people’s abdomens, just the police work that surrounds them. Alicia supposes she probably could have come up with something a little bit more unrelated—the weather, maybe, how Mars’ interior apparently holds vast reservoirs of water—but it’s too late now. The cat spilled the milk as it jumped out of the bag, etcetera.

This wine is sour and _strong._  Alicia peers curiously at the label. She poured herself a second glass for something to do once they resettled, and now she’s regretting it. Her brain feels like it’s floating around untethered inside her skull.

Kalinda has been nursing her own drink slowly, a child allowed to stay up late with the grownups. If the question startles her, she doesn’t show it. “Fine,” she says steadily. “Though they don’t have any real leads.”

They would if you told them something concrete, Alicia doesn’t say. Not that she’s in a position to comment; when the detectives tried to question her she invoked privilege.

(“Don’t you get it?” asked the young man earnestly, pacing the hospital’s linoleum floor. His badge was so new it glowed. “We know Kalinda, okay? We’ve known her for years. We’re trying to help.”

Alicia was watching his partner talk to Kalinda through room 603’s porthole window. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he was making Kalinda smile. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I can see that.”

“So?” the detective demanded, palms out in supplication. “Just give me someone to arrest.”

 _Just give me something to do_ , Alicia had thought, that first day when she found Kalinda with an IV taped to her arm.

She shook her head. Opened her mouth. Ms.-Sharma-is-my-client-and-anything-we-discuss-cannot—

The detective turned away in disgust.)

Something must show on her face. “Alicia…”

When she looks up Kalinda’s watching the burned-down fire, her eyes almost completely hidden behind her lashes. The sliver Alicia can see is steely and expressionless.

“How did you see this working, exactly?”

Kalinda’s voice is mild, like she’s pointing out an interesting side note to a case; Alicia feels it like a slap.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She laughs bitterly. “You’d convalesce, we’d stay up late talking and grow closer together.” The sarcasm tastes hollow. There’s a memory there Alicia doesn’t want, _I’ll put this in my copy of_ Eat Pray Love. She sighs, chasing it down with more sour wine. “I don’t know, Kalinda,” she says again, this time sincerely. “It’s my fault this happened, so—”

Kalinda sets her wine glass down with a clatter. It’s startling, the sharpest display of movement Alicia’s seen from her in ages—she hadn’t realized until this moment, but all of Kalinda’s gestures since the shooting have been slowed, some vital internal mechanism rusted over with pain. “That is _not_ —” Kalinda cuts her hand through the air impatiently, pushing away Alicia’s words. “Look. Don’t be ridiculous. You weren’t the one who shot me.”

Alicia puts down her own wine glass, ecstatic to finally have an excuse to yell. “But _I_ called him, Kalinda. He found you through me.”

“Yes, fine—”

Alicia’s heart trips over itself. She’d thought, she’d _suspected_ , but to have it confirmed that was actually how he—

“—But it’s not like you walked him up to my front door,” Kalinda continues, unflinching. “You can’t be responsible for everything, Alicia.” The way she says it, it sounds like an accusation.

Alicia leans back against the sofa weakly. She doesn’t want to yell, not anymore. “Didn’t you used to tell me to take charge? To ‘stop letting things just happen’?” The accent sticks to the roof of her mouth, imprecise and slippery. She is very probably drunk.

Kalinda almost smiles. “Yes. But at work, Alicia. The competition with Cary. I meant take charge of your own life, not mine.” This time, the rebuke sounds more like a stalemate.

“Was that guilt?” Alicia asks suddenly. “Way back then, the competition—you wanted me to win. You _warned_ me the decision was coming, and then you practically told me how. Was that guilt?”

Kalinda blinks. “No. Was this?”

Alicia rubs the bridge of her nose, wishing she could scrub her gritty eyes. She can’t understand why she’s still bothering with mascara. “No. Yes. I don’t know.”

Kalinda blows out a breath. “Wow.” She sounds almost impressed. “That’s some complex you’ve got going on there.”

Yes, yes, it’s my mother, Alicia starts to say, but then she looks over at Kalinda’s familiar-unfamiliar face. It stares back at her with all the expressiveness of a sphinx. Still, there’s something else, something tugging at the edges of Alicia’s subconscious—the hospital gave Kalinda back her jewellery and she’s wearing it now, little silver knots in her ears and the horseshoe necklace, thick rings on her fingers. The metal flickers like eyes in the firelight.

(The clothes weren’t salvageable, the technicians had explained, polite phone-operator voices. The blood, naturally, and then of course they had to be cut off her.

Of course, Alicia had murmured, touching the clear baggy that held the necklace. There was dried blood on the clasp.)

“It wasn’t guilt,” Alicia says suddenly. The words feel wrenched and bitten off. “It wasn't—god, Kalinda, I thought you were _dead_." She can't speak, can't articulate it. "I was so terrified. When I called him—” She hasn’t told Kalinda this bit, not yet; it feels oddly like a confession. “I was sitting there outside your apartment and I had no idea what else to do. So I called him. And I asked him what he did to you. And he _laughed_.” Her stomach turns over just remembering it. She’d been afraid to even dial the number in case it somehow caused him to appear.

Kalinda is watching her steadily. It’s incongruous, all that jewellery paired with her bare face. “That—” She breathes. “That sounds about right for him, yeah.”

Alicia curls her fingers into fists. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, okay?” she says. Her enunciation is slow and fierce, as if crisp syllables are the way to make Kalinda understand. “Anything else, I mean. _That_ isn’t guilt.”

Kalinda stares. When she speaks, she answers another question entirely: “Nothing is going to happen to me.”

The night presses itself up against the windows, purring.


	4. Such anger sets your mouth

The house carries noise like an amphitheatre.

Kalinda noticed it the second day, when she could hear every word of the phone call Alicia took upstairs. Even from all the way in the den Alicia’s voice was quiet but clear, like a penny dropping centre-stage at Epidaurus. She was telling someone that she loved them, that she’d be home soon.

Kalinda shut the door against the sound.

She hasn’t completely puzzled it out, but she thinks the acoustics might have something to do with the vaulted living room, the stretch of fireplace running up its side. A hollow echo chamber at the heart of the house.

Or it could be something else. The loft is still a mystery to Kalinda, who has yet to brave the painful climb upstairs. For all she knows, Alicia’s bed could be right on the other side of the railing.

Which is why it’s important Kalinda stays absolutely silent as she creeps across the living room floor.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work out that way; she shifts around a creaky patch of floorboard beside the couch only to step on another next to the ottoman. The ancient wood wails in indignation.

Kalinda freezes, gaze shooting up towards the staircase.

Silence.

She waits for another minute anyway, breathing. The giant grandfather clock ticks out the seconds. Kalinda half-expects Uncle Drosselmeyer to appear at the top, sprinkling fairy dust onto the furniture.

It’s early in North Carolina, fuzzy pre-dawn filtering through the windows and turning all the floors the colour of an old bruise. _Too_ early, actually. Or at least too early for anyone to be reasonably awake.

(Early enough for Alicia to worry.)

Not that Kalinda believes she’d actually come downstairs. All day yesterday they moved throughout the house in wide, awkward orbits that only ever crossed in the kitchen, and even then only at mealtimes. There had been no more talk of guilt. Alicia had made that very clear:

“Hi,” she'd said when Kalinda stumbled in at seven AM looking for coffee. She was hunched over a bowl of frosted flakes reading the newspaper, dripping milk onto the financial section. Her pyjama pants were actual flannel.

“Hi,” Kalinda answered after a beat. She wanted a cigarette and caffeine and for Alicia’s hair to be less messy. Leela leaned out her eyes, wanting to smooth it.

But when Alicia lifted her head her face was like a closed door. “Sorry about last night. It was inappropriate of me.”

_Look, we’re working together. That’s good enough, isn’t it?_

Kalinda turned away from Alicia's shuttered eyes, wrenching her arms too high to reach for the coffee filter. Only the cupboards saw her wince. “No problem.”

And that was that.

Still, Kalinda doesn’t want to wake her. For politeness’ sake, of course, but also because when Alicia is asleep Kalinda doesn’t have to wonder what she’s thinking or feeling or doing. It’s exhausting, that wondering. Like trying to hold thirty digits of pi in your head at once. Bits keep slipping in and out of Kalinda’s mind and then she’s caught flat-footed when her equations don’t add up.

It wasn’t always this hard—Kalinda remembers when Alicia used to be the easiest read in the world. Then Blake appeared and it became a balancing act, like carrying around a Prince Rupert’s drop. Kalinda was constantly staring into Alicia’s face thinking, _Do you know? Do you know yet?_ Now the secret is out and Kalinda’s left clutching at handfuls of exploded glass, wondering what each piece means.

Really, Alicia is just much easier unconscious.

The den is tucked off to one side of the living room. Kalinda slips inside and shuts the door.

 

 

(There's a reason she's up so early:

Kalinda dreams about the back of an ambulance, fluorescent pot lights in the ceiling and shelves crammed full of candy-bright medical equipment. She knows it’s a dream because the cabin is also equipped with an extra set of organs. The lungs hang from a silver stand, breathing gently.

“Do you want these?” asks the female paramedic. She is holding a beating heart in a shallow bowl. Beside her are quarts of blood and an entire dangling skeleton, arranged like a classroom specimen. It sways as the ambulance turns a corner.

“Whose are they?” Kalinda asks, touching the edge of the bowl. The heart throbs.

The paramedic shrugs. She’s wearing an oxygen mask. Outside the back doors stars streak by, galaxies coalescing and expanding, the big bang in sine formation. “Organ donor. Died in a house fire.”

Kalinda wakes up.)

 

 

Inside the den is small, just a chair and a desk, but Kalinda isn’t interested in that. She’s interested in the _walls_. Nearly every square inch of space is covered in photographs, and Kalinda’s been studying them since yesterday.

Most of them are of Alicia’s kids—the standard black-and-white baby photos, cherubic Florrick toddlers pulling themselves up on furniture—but not all. Not quite. Behind the desk there’s a triptych from Peter and Alicia’s wedding; kissing at the altar, feeding each other cake, dancing. They match perfectly, dark dark hair and identically arching eyebrows, Barbie and Ken gone neoclassical. Both of them look almost shockingly young. Alicia has a wide, happy smile and Botticelli curls.

Since that success, Kalinda’s been looking for others. So far she’s found a pregnant Alicia by the mantle, one hand resting serenely on her sloping belly, and a starched family photo tucked beside the window, Peter and Alicia holding a baby each. But now there’s something else: what she originally took to be a picture of Grace seems to be Alicia instead, darker hair and eyebrows. A towheaded boy with a wide seventies collar yanks on her hand.

“It’s chemically straightened,” Alicia had told her once, nearly three years ago. She was fingering her bob’s neat swinging ends. “Which is just about the most overpriced process you can imagine. I actually might have to stop soon, what with the kids school bills.”

Kalinda shrugged, bored. At the time she still hadn’t been sure she liked Alicia; the unsolicited bits of personal information chaffed. “Just put it up. How bad can it be?”

Alicia had laughed. “Oh my god, you don’t understand. It wouldn’t _stay_ up.”

Looking now, Kalinda can see what she meant. In the photos Alicia has the tiniest corkscrew curls imaginable, so small they could wrap around Kalinda’s littlest finger. Like fairy hair.

But there's something else all of Alicia’s past incarnations have in common—she looks happy. In every single one of the photographs, she looks happy.

Kalinda remembers her own words— _I didn't know you, I'd never even seen a picture of you, to me you were just a housewife_ —and chokes on them.

 

 

Later Kalinda stands in the bathroom, trying to figuring out the mechanics of washing her own hair.

She doesn’t like the face looking back at her from the mirror. It's been three days of clumsily re-pinning the tight bun fixed by the discharge nurse and the whole affair has finally collapsed, listing to one side like a cut Gordian knot. Kalinda lifts a careful hand to touch the loose strands at her neck. It hurts to reach any higher but she manages it, pulling out the remaining pins one by one. When she grits her teeth the pain sings along her jaw.

(Leela again. Cigarettes and tea and mouth guards, nervous ticks Kalinda doesn’t need.)

The first of ten physio appointments is scheduled for today, thirty minutes away in Marion. Which means Kalinda has even more cause to want to look like herself. She’s trying to limit the places Leela touches, like isolating a contagion.

It isn't quite working; the claw foot tub reminds her of something. The memory pushes at Kalinda as she washes her hands, winding itself around her ankles like a phantom cat.

“’Love you,” Nick said, kissing the back of her neck in a hotel room they couldn’t afford. There hadn’t been any real money, not then. No money, no network, no people, no power. Leela could have left so easily.

Which, of course, was why she didn't.

“Shut up,” Leela gasped. She had an accent to go with her cigarette stains. “Just—fuck. Shut up.”

They had been pretzelled together in an old-fashioned bathtub that was big enough for five people, claw feet and plush towels. The E meant Nick couldn’t get it up so he was fingering her instead, slow and good and grinding. Leela had wanted to put things in her mouth. She bit her own knuckle in the end, hard and deep enough that it bled and bled and wouldn’t stop.

Nick brought it up again when Kalinda was lying on the floor in her apartment: “Remember Montreal? Jesus, I thought we were going to have to take you to the hospital.”

He looked at the pool of blood underneath her.

“Not so lucky this time, eh Leela?”

When Kalinda finally shakes off the memory her mirror-self keeps shaking, vibrating in the glass. Her arms are wrapped around her bent body, tight as a lover’s embrace. Only Kalinda can’t feel her fingers, can’t feel the robe under her palms, can’t even remember initiating the action. Her arms feel heavy and alien, almost as if someone else is doing the holding.

(Leela stretches herself out inside Kalinda’s ribcage, getting acquainted, touching things that aren’t hers.)


	5. One narrow gate for the moon to go forth

Alicia lies awake in bed for an hour before her desire for coffee overpowers her desire to avoid Kalinda. She passes the time examining a stack of ancient picture books from her childhood, _The Velveteen Rabbit_ and _Mud Pies and Other Recipes_. She pulled them off the shelves of the nursery yesterday, a room she’s frankly surprised her mother bothered to keep. All the familiar old toys are still there, lined up in neat marching rows under the window like children are expected at any moment.

Alicia wonders about that.

There’s a book she pauses over longer than the others:

_Here is a house._   
_Its name is number 140._   
_And here comes the little boy who lives in it._   
_His name is Ivan._   
_Ivan is going up the stairs into the attic._   
_The attic is his favorite room,_   
_because it is full of all sorts of things_   
_that nobody has any use for anymore—  
nobody except Ivan._

_Ivan, Divan, and Zariman_ ; a boy, a sofa, and a mouse, best of friends. Alicia used to read it to Owen when he was little, right around when the divorce proceedings began. Owen loved it because Ivan had red hair and freckles, and because he liked staring into the burnt-orange of Divan’s cushions, but Alicia has always hated it. The ending is awful—the giant sofa ends up in the dump heap, dead and crushed. The mouse and the boy go on alone.

Alicia looks at the picture of them staring sadly into the blue-dark moon for a long time.

Thankfully, the kitchen is blissfully empty when she finally creeps downstairs, feeling odd and out of sorts. She has to drive Kalinda to physio today, but for now she’s alone. She presses START on her mother’s fancy espresso machine and turns on the tiny wall-mounted TV above the toaster oven. On screen, a smiling family of four tries to sell her a Mazda. Alicia reaches for the landline receiver.

Zach is the only one who picks up his phone. “Grace came down for Sunday pancakes and then went back to bed,” he reports dutifully. “Dad’s in the study.”

Alicia feels her heart twist sideways. Sunday pancakes, the study—it’s as if the call has bounced off the wrong cell tower and back in time. Alicia glances over at the car commercial, half expecting the Mazda to morph into the Doc’s DeLorean.

“That’s fine,” she tells Zach, tracing the edge of the counter. “I’ll call back for Grace later. How’re things at Dad’s?”

Zach scoffs at her. “It’s not _Dad’s_ , Mom, it’s our old house. And it’s fine. How’s Grandma’s?”

“It’s fine,” Alicia echoes. “I miss you guys, though.”

“Yeah.” Zach crunches on something, most likely toast. Alicia fights down the urge to ask him if he’s using a plate. “We miss you too.”

He never used to say things like that before the scandal broke. Not for the first time, Alicia wonders if she should take her kids back to counselling.

“I love you,” she murmurs, watery for no reason at all.

Zach pauses in his munching. “Mom, are you okay?”

Crap. “I’m fine, baby.” Alicia shakes herself, hardening her voice into something that’s both breezy and appropriately weary. “Just tired.” And she is, she reminds herself. That’s all.

“Okay,” Zach says, dragging it out into that teenager drawl that means five different things. Alicia can picture him, standing in their old kitchen dropping crumbs onto the counter where she used to set his baby swing. “We should all go back to Grandma’s some time. You know, like we used to.”

Alicia sighs. “We’ll see.”

That gets another ‘okay’, even longer. Then Grace arrives, voice groggy with sleep, to ask what the house looks like in winter and how big it is and does it still have the giant fireplace like in her baby pictures. Alicia has to promise to try and roast marshmallows for her. Peter comes on next and asks how she’s holding up. They talk for a while about old, familiar things—work, the kids, repairs the house needs before they put it back on the market—and it really does feel like five years ago. Then Zach announces he needs his cellphone back and the moment ends.

“Love you, Mom,” Zach says as they’re hanging up. Alicia can hear Grace shouting goodbye in the background.

“Zach,” she says in a rush. “Just quickly, I need you to remember something for me. When you were little, did I ever read you a book called _Ivan, Divan, and Zariman_?”

Zach huffs, half-impatient, half-puzzled. “I don’t think so? I dunno, Mom, all I really remember is _Goodnight Moon_ and the _Berenstain Bears_.”

Alicia exhales. “Okay. Good.”

Grace calls out in the background again, _What about the Berenstain Bears?_ , but Zach’s already hung up.

Alicia blinks her way slowly back to the present. The weather network chirps about incoming flurries, tiny snowflake graphics swooping in from the north. Her coffee drips down into the finished pot. Alicia pours herself a mug and reaches for the sugar.

When she turns around, Kalinda is leaning in the doorway.

“Oh—” Alicia just barely manages to swallow her mouthful of coffee without spitting, burning her throat in the process. “Jesus, Kalinda. You scared me.”

“Sorry.” The way she’s leaning, Kalinda could have been standing there for minutes or hours. Alicia’s about to ask which when she finally notices Kalinda’s appearance.

Which— _What?_

The shock must show on her face. “Yeah,” Kalinda says, shrugging. She’s wrapped up in one of the bathrobes Alicia bought for her to wear at the hospital, hair dripping loose and wet down her back. “Look, I think I might need some help,” she continues, holding out a shampoo bottle. “I can’t lift my arms high enough. Do you think you could…” She trails off, looking acutely uncomfortable, tension in every line of her body.

For a truly heart-stopping second, Alicia thinks Kalinda means for them to go back to the bathroom together (bathroom as in bathtub, as in bath, as in—). Then she realizes Kalinda’s gesturing at the sink.

“Oh. _Oh_.” Relief makes her chirpier than normal. “Absolutely. Of course. It’s no problem at all.” She’s upspeaking, for god’s sakes, all of her sentences drifting higher at the end like a teenage girl. Her hands twist into each other until she forcibly stops them.

She drags a chair over for Kalinda to sit in, finds a clean dishtowel to cushion her neck. Just yesterday she’d been thinking that maybe the doctors had overstated Kalinda’s dependency—sure, she walked more slowly than usual and couldn’t drive herself to physio, but did that really amount to not being able to live alone? But now _this_ … Alicia imagines all the other things you need to lift your arms for. Realizes why Kalinda hasn’t been wearing a stitch of makeup.

“How high can you raise them?” she asks quietly, leaning over Kalinda to run the water.

Kalinda grimaces. “It’s fine as long as I keep my elbows down.” She looks tense and angry in the chair, both feet on the floor like she’s ready to run. Alicia’s kids used to sit like that. She always made them scoot their bums back until their little feet dangled. _This is not a race, Zach, this is dinner._

She can’t imagine doing the same to Kalinda. “Could you—?” She breaks off to test the water with an elbow, exactly the same way she used to test Grace’s bathwater. Everything feels absurd and stretched, reality through a funhouse mirror. “I just need you to lean back a bit.”

Kalinda settles against the rolled dishtowel, watching Alicia’s every move. Her hair drips onto the robe, oil-slick dark, the water beading up against the fluffy fabric. “I wouldn’t have asked,” she starts. “It’s just that wetting it doesn’t—”

“It’s _fine_ , Kalinda. I don’t mind.” Alicia’s caught somewhere between brusque and tender. Now that they’re actually both here, crowded together in front of the sink, the awkward intimacy of the moment is catching up with her. The air hangs close and thick.

The water is finally warm enough. There’s nothing left to do but actually touch Kalinda, actually lift her head and collect her slippery-smooth hair up into a pile. It’s shorter than Alicia would have guessed, down to about the tops of her shoulder blades. “Let me know if it’s too hot,” Alicia warns inanely, mimicking every salon washer she’s ever encountered. The sink’s spray hose is hard to direct, clumsy. Alicia cups her hand along Kalinda’s hairline with the vague idea that it might protect her eyes.

Kalinda voice is flat. “S’fine.”

The shampoo is a smell Alicia recognizes, bergamot oil with an undertone of apricots. Once Kalinda’s hair is soaked through Alicia rubs it into a lather between her palms, stalling. She used to wash her friends’ hair like this in high school, after sleepovers and before big dances, ’80s hairspray slicking away down the sink. Her own never needed it—too thick and unruly to suffer the indignity of teenage greasiness, probably—but sometimes she asked to be included anyway. It felt nice, Alicia remembers. It felt really nice.

(From the way Kalinda's sitting, she doesn't seem to share the opinion.) 

Finally Alicia manages to locate her backbone, reaching down. Kalinda’s hair is straight and rough-fine, individual strands catching along her fingers as she rubs the shampoo in. She’s afraid to press too hard at first, like washing the surface of an egg, but eventually she gives up and starts scrubbing like she would at her own head. When she finally rinses out the suds she gets a surprise: they’re almost shockingly pink, swirling cheerily down the drain like so much Easter dye.

“Um—”

Kalinda’s still watching her face. “That’s what I was trying to tell you,” she says quietly. “Why I needed help. Just wetting it wasn’t getting the blood.”

Alicia can think of absolutely nothing to say. “Oh.”

She blow-dries Kalinda’s hair quickly and inexpertly, too used to doing her own. At first she thinks Kalinda’s going to object—she has a whole speech planned about the drive to physio, the walk out to the car in the freezing cold—but Kalinda surprises her again by submitting without comment. And then  _again_ , nodding when Alicia offers to put her hair up. (The bun she manages is barely passable, one of those floppy messes Grace sometimes wears, but Kalinda doesn’t mention that either.)

Later they're idling outside the entrance to the physio building after a long, silent drive made even quieter by the snow. “Okay,” Alicia says. It feels like the first word she has spoken in hours. “I’ll pick you up at 5?” She means it as a question but Kalinda treats it like a statement of fact, getting out of the car without so much as a nod.

Well. That’s that. Alicia grits her teeth and pulls away.

She stays in town, puttering around the local boutiques and eating a bowl of tomato soup in a corner diner. Marion’s obviously a summertime city, most of its businesses closed for the season, but there’s more than enough to keep Alicia occupied. She buys a carved wooden angel for Grace at an antique shop, smiling politely when the woman at the counter says, “God Bless.”

Mostly, though, she thinks.

By the time five o’clock rolls around, she has a shaky plan outlined in her mind. When Kalinda gets in the car and buckles her seatbelt, Alicia turns off the ignition instead of pulling out.

Kalinda sits back. By now, Alicia figures she must be more or less used to this tactic.

“Look,” Alicia starts. “You said it wasn’t guilt, those things you did for me before. Warning me about the competition. You didn’t do it because you felt guilty.”

Kalinda stares at her calmly. “No.”

“So why did you do it?”

This time Kalinda blinks, a barely perceptible check. “I knew the decision was coming,” she shrugs. “So I helped.” The way she says it sounds like one just followed from the other, a natural progression. Alicia remembers sitting in the car with her outside the jailhouse, that stiff posture like she was braced for impact. _I knew I could help so I helped_.

Not this time. “But why did you help _me_ , Kalinda? Why not Cary? Why help at all?” Her voice is more strident than she means it to be, running away from her angrily. She takes a deep breath.

Now Kalinda looks confused. It passes over her face like a cloud, flickering around the edges of her eyes. “We were friends,” she says slowly. “Cary and I— weren’t.” The bun Alicia constructed doesn’t suit her, too severe along the hairline. Wisps bracket her nape like one of Degas’s ballerinas.

Alicia isn’t done. “So you helped me out of social obligation?”

“No!” Kalinda’s annoyed, that same sharp frustration that appeared when Alicia tried to claim responsibility for the shooting. “God, Alicia. I _wanted_ to.”

“Why?”

Kalinda opens her mouth. Closes it. “Because.” Alicia starts to talk over her but she holds up a hand. “Because I enjoyed it,” she says finally. “Helping you. I did it because I enjoyed it.”

Alicia sits back against the seat. That was the answer she had been driving for, yes, but it’s still gratifying to hear. She feels a flush creeping up her throat, pink and pleased. “All right, well.” She clears her throat. “The same applies to me.” Out of the corner of her eye she sees Kalinda stiffen. “So when you need help with something, like washing your hair, or changing your dressing, or—God, anything really—don’t hesitate to ask.”

Kalinda just looks bemused now, cocking her head like Alicia’s an obscure crossword puzzle clue she can't quite figure out. “All right.”

Alicia can hardly believe that worked. “It’s why I offered to take you,” she continues, pressing. It almost feels too easy.

Kalinda smiles. “All _right_ , Alicia.”

“Good. Okay.”

They sit in silence for another minute, staring at each other.


End file.
